ARTWORKS
![The Garden of Desires 1](https://iterarte.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/7f9b052d-d625-4e50-b648-fef0ed096509-l.jpg)
Marwan Sahmarani
NIDHI KHURANA
In this episode during a visit to his Beirut studio, Marwan Sahmarani discusses with Founder Tamara Chalabi his artistic practice; what and who inspires him; […]
Tazeen, in Farsi, means to adorn and embellish. A fun fact is that this was not the name I was given at birth but I was renamed at the age of 10, as my mom became superstitious that I would grow up stubborn and headstrong if my name was not changed.
Tired.
Paya – The main ingredients of this dish are the trotters or hooves of a cow or goat, cooked in special spices to a thick, soup-like form and eaten with naan dipped into it. A traditional South Asian delicacy.
TEA – Strong brew with cardamon.
Istanbul, Turkey. I love the preservation of its history and contemporary culture.
Very tough to name one, most are non – Hollywood. Currently, Zindagi Tamasha (Circus of Life) a Pakistani drama film directed by Sarmad Khoosat.
Too many to list! A book that comes to mind right now is ‘My Mother Laughs’ by Chantal Akerman
“Sometimes you don’t survive whole, you just survive in part. But the grandeur of life is that attempt, it’s not about the solution. It is about being as fearless as one can, behaving as beautifully as one can, under completely impossible circumstances.” Toni Morrison
Arundhati Roy is an Indian author and human rights activist.
Mohammad Jibran Nasir, a Pakistani civil rights activist, and lawyer.
Salima Hashmi, a Pakistani painter, artist, writer, activist and my former professor.
The beautiful walking trail right next to our house; people I love live within 2 km and the abundance of natural light in every room.
Be confident and brave, your heart and mind is in the right, trust yourself.
Spend an entire day visiting multiple contemporary art galleries.
Teal and Dark Magenta.
Qalam – a fine, handmade brush using chipmunk hair, used for the fine detailing in Miniature Painting.
Tidy – an organized chaos.
To find my voice and the means to express it.
Most challenging is to share my emotional vulnerability and the most exciting part is when your art inspires others.
Placing multiple paper cutouts of red-coloured cockroaches at different locations in Pearson International Airport, some areas are not even accessible to the general public.
“I love your work, but it’s the cockroach!”
If you meant style in clothing/appearance: Elegant, vintage, comfortable.
Invitation to showcase my work at Pearson International Airport, Toronto.
To collaborate with artist Shirin Neshat. I have admired her work for ages.
Dia Beacon, New York.
Raised in a family where secular thinking and spiritual practices were always accessible, my mother’s love, appreciation and performances of South Asian traditional poetry, ghazals and mystical Sufi music seeped into my soul. I mostly listen to Urdu ghazals, short poems with rhyming couplets often expressing love’s beauty despite the pain of loss and separation.
Urdu poetry has always been a language of the heart, and when it meets the right musical notes and a soulful voice, the outcome is sheer magic.
The other music genre I listen to, especially when creating text drawings, is qawwali, a Sufi devotional style marked by rhythmic improvisatory repetition of a short phrase. They transport me to solitude, where my only companions are the rhythms of the qawwali, the words of its spiritual poetry and my breathing.